Ontario Housing Starts Rise in January

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Feb. 8, 2017) - Housing starts in the Ontario region were trending at 75,025 units in January, up from 71,268 units in December, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The trend is a six month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.

"While it would be pre-mature to extrapolate too much from one month's worth of activity, construction activity did grow across most housing segments in January, reaching one of the highest levels in the past year. Stronger growth in the Ontario job market, lower rental vacancy rates and less choice in the resale market, particularly for single family homes, continued to exert upward pressure on home starts," said Ted Tsiakopoulos, CMHC's Ontario Regional Economist.

CMHC uses the trend measure as a complement to the monthly SAAR of housing starts to account for considerable swings in monthly estimates and obtain a more complete picture of the state of the housing market. In some situations, analysing only SAAR data can be misleading in some markets, as they are largely driven by the multiples segment of the markets which can be quite variable from one month to the next.

The SAAR of total urban housing starts was 96,883 units in January, up from 77,474 units in December. For January 2017, Ontario urban home starts are up significantly from the same period one year ago.

Preliminary Housing Starts data is also available in English and French at the following link:
Preliminary Housing Starts Tables

As Canada's authority on housing, CMHC contributes to the stability of the housing market and financial system, provides support for Canadians in housing need, and offers objective housing research and information to Canadian governments, consumers and the housing industry.

For more information, visit our website at www.cmhc.ca or follow us on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Additional data is available upon request.

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To view the graph and tables associated with this release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/1085148e.pdf